Of all the things Fallout 76 has got wrong, a switcheroo on a collector’s edition bag has proved to be one of the most contentious.
In an attempt to make that right, Bethesda is now going to send folks a proper canvas bag – presumably like the ones originally advertised – as a replacement for the plastic junk.
If you’re new to this saga, as part of a $299.95 Collector’s Edition for Fallout 76, Bethesda promised fans they’d be getting a military-style canvas bag as part of the deal. Instead, and with no warning, people were sent a very cheap nylon bag.
Yo @BethesdaStudios @bethesda @BethesdaSupport this isn’t a West Tek canvas bag. This a ghetto ass nylon trash bag @Fallout tf guys pic.twitter.com/mhzvcHqoCX
— Serianni (@serianni13) November 16, 2018
In response to fan outcry over the move, Bethesda tweeted this earlier today:
We are finalizing manufacturing plans for replacement canvas bags for the Fallout 76: Power Armor Edition. If you purchased the CE, please visit https://t.co/S5ClEZuQrx and submit a ticket by Jan. 31, 2019. We’ll arrange to send you a replacement as soon as the bags are ready.
— Bethesda Support (@BethesdaSupport) December 3, 2018
I can’t believe this game is such a mess that I’ve had to write two stories about a plastic bag.
Comments
62 responses to “Bethesda Is Sending Out Replacements For Fallout 76’s Nylon Trash Bags”
Justice prevails!
Good to hear, I put my ticket in. I like Bethesda as developers, but their marketing department (responsible for physical edition content and packaging) fucked this up pretty badly.
Ditto … and agreed. It should never have happened to in the first place. Bethesda thought they could stiff their heavy paying customers and get away with it. I hope whoever made that decision gets sacked.
I don’t think you know what a “marketing department” is or does. A marketer is not responsible for the production or quality of a product. It sounds like you want an easy scapegoat so you don’t have to blame ‘Bethesdas developers’. To be clear, its the company that chose to cut costs on the production of a product, not its marketers.
Marketers ONLY provide advice on how best to bring that product to market. Marketers MOST LIKELY provided the advice that delivering a product that was not as advertised was not a smart move. This is very industry standard advice. Bethesda as a company almost certainly chose to ignore this due to factory production costs being higher than they would have liked.
Bethesda has already stated in email responses that they cut costs due to production costs being too high. Meaning that marketers are not at fault and advertisers are not a fault. Bethesda is at fault. They chose as business people to try and increase their margins by cutting costs to the production of the product after advertising materials had already been sent out.
In no business is the marketing department ever “responsible for for physical edition content and packaging”.
In most instances I’d be surprised if marketing was actually allowed to have an input into the decision before it was made. Most of the time a decision gets made and marketing has to either explain why that’s a horrific idea, or forced to sell the shit sandwich they’ve been given.
Would be fascinating to see in particular what the reaction of the Australian marketing arm would be when they received this decision was delivered from on high, considering they’d be all too familiar with how stringent our consumer laws are.
The ‘what we want’ part is usually decided by senior management, for sure. From what I’ve seen of it (as a programmer, so outside the bubble), marketing does tend to have some input into it but not the final call. What they are responsible for is the implementation of whatever the final decision is. This is in the context of marketing at head office, which encompasses publishing; regional offices probably wouldn’t have any input at all unless they were doing a local edition for some reason.
Hi Spoog, as I noted in the post you replied to, I’ve worked for and with game companies. For self-publishers, the marketing department is responsible for the development and production of physical editions. You say “it’s the company that chose to cut costs” and you’re right – the marketing department of the company is responsible for that.
For Bethesda Softworks (the publishing portion of Bethesda), this falls under Pete Hines, Vice President of PR and Marketing.
Just an addendum, publishing also comes under the marketing department at Blizzard Entertainment, as you can see in this job listing.
Wooo, I didn’t actually mind the nylon bag, but I’ll take another canvas one as well tyvm :D.
Good, now work on fixing Fallout 76.
They have been, and have been posting weekly progress updates. There’s a patch tonight and another next week.
Not only that, they were able to detail up-front what was in each of the two patches which are being launched on different dates. Which gives an indicator of how many people must be working on them. It’s a good sign.
Awesome, you have done the right thing Bethesda.
I didn’t expect this to happen but glad it did, I’m sure the bag will be made high quality and even better than originally intended, because if the don’t the shit storm would continue.
The tweet I want to see contains an admission that they deliberately misled customers, and an unreserved apology for changing the product, disrespecting customers, and offering a terrible excuse.
So, do you get the replacement AND the five bucks (500 atoms)? Or did acceptance of the atoms serve as waiver for the bag?
I would say that if you took the 500 atoms as compensation it would negate the bag replacement in a legal sense.
buuuuut… the absolute cluster fuck that would cause would be huge, so my guess is you could get the bag even if you took the 500 atoms
Ok downvote me if you want but Bethesda shouldn’t be congratulated on doing something that they should have done in the first place, they aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they are doing it to save face and protect themselves from a potential class action suit for false advertising.
Yeah… And… Isn’t that what a company is supposed to do when they fuck up, I agree they should of done it in the beginning and the handled it poorly after, but this is the only outcome (long time coming) that’s acceptable.
It’s just that though, acceptable. This is not a good situation no matter how you look at it, this is Bethesda on damage control.
Agreed 100%, they really shit the bed with this one, But now at least there finally changing the sheets.
The subreddit r/FO76 is home to the most wilfully blind, frothy fanboy circlejerking I’ve seen in quite some time, and even that place was upset with the bags.
When your most ardent army of unquestioning yes-men start questioning your moves, you know you’ve gone too far.
Does it matter that people like and dislike the game really? Bethesda have done the right thing. They gambled, they lost, they paid up. It’s not any more complex than that. Let fans be fans you won’t loose sleep over it.
I have no problem with people liking the game. I have problems with rabid fanboys proclaiming things like that all the negative reviews are fake news and that because they enjoy the game and negative opinions are invalid.
That’s true, ans sadly we are seeing more of it. I have just stopped watching any Youtube channels that relate to F76, its not worth it.
Actually all the youtubes I’ve see have been absolutely scathing of this game. It deserves all the negativity to be honest.
We must be reading completely different Fo76 subreddits then because while there are people saying what they like about the game there are also some damn long lists on there about things that need to be fixed and people repeatedly venting frustrations with things like the CAMP system.
The Fo76 subreddit is one of the best I’ve seen for giving constructive feedback and not just raging incessantly about what they don’t like.
Edit:
Glancing at the top posts at the moment they are:
-Looks like canvas bags are on the way
-For all that is good and holy, please include a feature that shows what plans we’ve collected
-Please fix the failure to autoplay holo tapes when the pipboy is in the alternate view mode.
-After over 200 levels, here is what I’d like to see changed in the game:
-Power armor chassis should show what power armor is on it
-Time to fix the Scrapper Perk
-Anyone else irritated with how grenades/thrown weapons are unequipped when you join a server?
Based on those alone I’m failing to see a circlejerk of fanboying. That’s without even finding the massive bug post compilation that was put together…
What’s in the content and discussion of those seemingly constructive criticism posts is a lot more than what the headings would suggest. Just do a search for, “Am I the only one who,” or, “r/Fallout,” or, “YouTubers,” or “reviewers,” or, “metacritic,” or “FO4” in the r/FO76 sub and the toxicity will magically reveal itself. If you want to point out bugs or suggest a change to existing systems in that forum, you need to be incredibly careful about how you present any criticism whatsoever to avoid the downvote brigade, and god help you if you go ‘off message.’
That message being: “This game is an awesome, misunderstood gem, despite the bugs and inconvenient design decisions which ‘aren’t that bad’ (up to and including hours of lost progress); anyone criticising the game has either fundamentally misunderstood what was promised (comprehension insult intended), and/or was unreasonable in actually expecting to get what was promised, or simply haven’t played it and are on the hate-train thanks to a YouTuber/reviewer greed conspiracy. No other opinions or points of view are acceptable here. Also, Country Roads is the best thing since sliced bread.”
Basically, anything that isn’t in line with that circlejerk is considered thought-crime and will be downvoted into invisibility.
Yeah I disagree with you there. Most of those posts I mentioned from the top of the “hot” list I’d already read through and they were consistent with what I said. There’s still some fanboying going around and some overly glowing posts which I tend to ignore or skim and move on. The rest have moved onto what I’d call people who like the game but want the many nuisances and bugs to be fixed…which there are a hell of a lot of.
If you check out the new posts from today though there’s a hell of a lot more negativity, maybe that will suit what you want more? The patch they just dropped included some stealth nerfs/changes…some of which they’ve since added to their patch notes but others they haven’t commented on at all.
Looking at what people are reporting most of the changes were to be expected at some point but others….the others just make the game more annoying to play at end game, like nerfing the workshop resource rate, nerfing respawn times on cap stashes and seemingly all world spawn items, nerfing some item drop rates like power cores from robobrain mobs, making power cores drain faster in power armour…that one combined with workshop resource rate reduction and the robobrains is a pretty sizeable nerf.
Would have been nice if they got more bugs ironed out first (like making all perks work correctly) before nerfing things that seemed reasonably balanced to begin with.
I haven’t seen anyone congratulating them, but I have seen positive responses, which is the correct thing to do. You give desirable behaviour positive reinforcement, even if they’re just correcting a previous mistake. If you don’t give someone who fucked up a path to recover from it, you’re deliberately stripping any incentive for them to fix their mistake at all.
And? I am sorry of course they arent doing this out of the goodness of their heart but I am sure their lawyers could have found ways to get out of this, or at the very least stall and stall until it was a cluster of the greatest magnitude. Or they take the cheapest, fastest way out, that not only give the people what they want, but also try and repair some damage done to the company.
In some senses it doesnt why they are doing it but the fact that they are doing something, is at least decent.
So lets look at it from you way… what did you want them to do? Nothing. Let the class action happen. Let Bethesda get sued just so you can get a taste of blood.
As someone in marketing, this would have been a management issue, i’ve seen it happen so many times. The designers/artists get told there will be a bag, usually non-specific on the type of bag, and they need to mock it up for demonstration purposes. No one ends up getting the specifics on the final product in time to create a realistic mockup and management tell them just to use what they already have.
The management in charge of this is marketing management though, at least for the developers I’ve worked for or with. They have their own PO that this stuff is charged to, and organising the production run is marketing division’s responsibility. It only leaves marketing once it gets higher than the CMO or marketing director/VP and generally the only person above that is the CEO. It may not be the trench worker marketer’s fault, but it’s almost certainly the division’s fault.
Again, it sounds like you have absolutely 0 idea about what a marketer or marketing team does. Marketing teams DO NOT ‘organise the production run’. You are wrong. Literally google it.
I responded to this above; this is how it works for the game companies I’ve been involved with, and the org structure of Bethesda follows the same lines.
Another classic case of pissing money up the wall instead of just doing it right the first time.
“Submit a ticket by Jan, 31, 2019”. WTF? Just send the damn bag to everyone who ordered the damn bag. Don’t continue to make it the customers’ problem.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be a little afraid if Bethesda had the home address of everyone who bought the special edition of their game…
Yep fair enough.
They don’t know who ordered it, retailers don’t pass on personal information about their customers to the publisher. The only ones they know for sure are the ones that ordered it through the Bethesda store, and that was limited to the US only.
That give people plenty of time to see the message and recover their receipt. 2 months is fine.
I hope they’re reasonable about claims after that though. I can see people getting this for Christmas, and suddenly having a month to try and get a copy of the receipt. With Christmas/New Year shenanigans, it might be tougher than usual.
But in general, yeah, 2 months should be plenty of time.
It took me ten minutes to print my receipt, write my address on it and submit the ticket, as for people getting this for Christmas, I don’t see a lot of Power Armor Edition’s being available that are not being resold on eBay.
In saying that, there is one at my local EB but I don’t think there will be many left.
There’s a reason you need to submit a ticket.
In order to replace your bag you must submit a ticket. In order to submit a ticket you must accept the terms and conditions of using the site. One of the first terms of using the site is waiving your right to class action. My ticket remains unsubmitted as there was plenty more not as promised other than the damned bag.
The class action waiver doesn’t apply to us, you can submit your ticket without waiving any rights. The first paragraph of section 15 (EEA refers to the European Economic Area):
If you live anywhere else, you can opt out of the class action waiver by emailing them within 30 days of creating an account. The details are in section 15B. If you created your account when Fallout 76 launched then you still have 9 days to complete this step.
Can someone explain how this actually works?
I purchased the PA edition from EB Games in Australia, does this mean Bethesda has to send out new one’s to people or the store of purchase or do you need to make a support ticket?
All good, I jumped the gun on that one, just saw the request from Bethesda to start a ticket
Does this mean the world shortage of canvas is finally over?
Maybe they were lost in there own game for a moment there…
Their stash limit was raised…
Cloth’s easy to come by, it was the ballistic fibre they couldn’t source.
So many give them the easiest pass on this bullshit. Ask yourselves, if Activision did this would you be so forgiving? I’ll be happy to put it all into context. They sold you a mod for the price of a full game, runs worse than a classic Nintendo game, and quite literally lied about every single aspect of the game. Then they conned people into buying the ultimate edition, and blatantly lied about what they were selling with it. Then responded with ‘we have no plans to address this’, and now with a civil action against them they ‘do the right thing’? To all who got royally fucked over, you deserve everything you get for being so gullible. Shine your knee pads and keep sucking on the ball sack of your master because you’re too fucking weak to admit you were taken for the ultimate ride, while the rest of us laugh right at you… ????????????????????????????????
Lol you sound like a bigger bitch than the people your bitching about
And with that comment, you are just as juvenile as him.
Good job there.
Awesome I will accept their 500 Atoms and a new bag 🙂
Which is funny because I never really cared about it in the first place 😀
So all of a sudden the Canvas shortage has ended?
How amazing!
Can we maybe get a digital copy of the game so I don’t need to worry about taking a 50GB bluray disk around to install a 50gb game from the internet ?
Looks like they will be about as shitty as they can get away with being, but they weren’t getting away with this and that’s the one reason they’ve acted. I don’t think they’re being decent, just doing what they need to keep fans on side to buy the next game
I think it goes without question that they are doing this to save face and a possibly of a lawsuit, they are in no way been altruistic.
I think the game itself is proof of how little respect Bethesda has for it’s fans.